C. D. Crouch

Editorial

On the front page of this issue we present a most excellent article from Brother C. D. Crouch of Dyess, Arkansas. We commend it to your careful reading. Brother Crouch has been preaching for some time with the little congregation at Dyess, Arkansas. Due to unprecedented crop failures there a general exodus of people from that section is under way, and many members of the church are being forced to move elsewhere to seek a livelihood. The little band that is left are unable to give Brother Crouch a living support, and for that reason he will be compelled to move. The Dyess congregation (what is left of it) will make real sacrifices to keep Brother Crouch through the remainder of this year, but he is now available for other work.

C. D. Crouch is a gospel preacher with rich experience and firm convictions as to the truth. He is an able and vigorous man, and gives promise of many years of useful service yet in the cause of Christ. We hope that he will quickly be contacted by some faithful congregation so that he may receive the necessary things of life while devoting himself to the task of teaching and preaching for which he is so eminently qualified. He will add real strength to the cause of New Testament Christianity in any community where he may go.

A Phenomenal Memory

One of the most amazing faculties of the human mind is the memory. Psychologists and physiologists have been fascinated for years by the study of this almost incredible phenomenon. How is it possible that one small brain can store up, and recall at will, the immense number of names, places, faces, events, dates, impressions, ideas, experiences, quotations, and the countless assortment of unrelated things that are available in the average memory?

The prodigious memory of Brother G. C. Brewer has been one at which his friends and acquaintances have marveled in admiring astonishment for more than two generations. With the greatest of ease he can recall events, conversations, the expression on faces, the very intonation of voice with which remarks were made thirty, forty, and fifty years after the person who made the remark has been dead and forgotten.

For example: In a letter to E. J. Bonner of Bowling Green, Kentucky, dated August 28, 1953, Brother Brewer writes:

"In the Spring of 1935, Yater Tant, G. K. Wallace, and Glenn Wallace came to me at the close of a speech at ACC and challenged me for a debate on Christian schools and the right of churches to support them."

Brother Brewer (a man who is often in error but never in doubt) then relates in detail the conversation that followed; how he accepted the challenge, and asked these three brethren what champion they would put up to represent them. They replied either N. B. Hardeman or Foy E. Wallace, Jr. He told them either of these men would be acceptable, but that he was sure neither would debate because both were down in black and white as endorsing his position. Tant and the Wallace brothers did not believe what he said, but it was true.

More than eighteen years have passed since that conversation; yet Brother Brewer not only recalls what Tant and the others said, but even remembers what they thought!

The prophets of old, by God's power, had the ability to predict events before they happened. Brother Brewer by the sheer genius of his own prodigious memory has ability to recall events that never happened! That's Genius with a capitol "G." In fact, it is positively uncanny. You see, at the very time Brother Brewer was having this conversation with Yater Tant in Abilene (a conversation which he was able to recall in such vivid detail and with such extraordinary accuracy more than eighteen years later), the said Yater Tant was more than five hundred miles away in Fort Smith, Arkansas, proudly tending a new-born son. he was not in Abilene; had "never been in Abilene; did not lay eyes on Abilene Christian College until many months later; and never actually set foot on the campus of that school until 1939 — more than four years after the lengthy conversation he had had with Brother Brewer and which Brother Brewer recalls so distinctly and clearly.

Earl West's Reply To Brewer

While we are on the subject, do you recall the article Brother Brewer wrote a few months ago saying that Earl West was mistaken in his reporting of the "Henderson meeting" of 1910 and David Lipscomb's reaction to it? You see, Brother Brewer had talked personally with Lipscomb at the time, and from his own memory of those conversations, he knew that Lipscomb was opposed only to the idea of "the meeting," and was not opposed to the sponsoring church program which was proposed in the meeting.

Earl West wrote a clear, factual, and documented rebuttal to the Brewer article, pointing out by precise quotations from Lipscomb's own writings about the Henderson affair that it is IMPOSSIBLE to reconcile Brother Brewer's memory of Lipscomb's attitude with the written record as it appears on the pages of the Gospel Advocate. One or the other is clearly in error.

To date (three months later) Brother Goodpasture has refused to publish the West rebuttal. Brother Brewer is king of the Advocate writers; and apparently the editor feels that for anybody to question his memory (even anybody like Earl West, who is also a staff writer) is nothing less than "lese majesty" — in fact, probably sacrilege. That Brewer memory is infallible! As between Lipscomb's written word and Brewer's memory of forty-year-old conversations, Brother Goodpasture chooses the Brewer memory ....